


A Broken Vessel

by wanderingaesthetic



Category: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II
Genre: Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, people crying in gutters, people drinking in gutters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 17:55:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1657256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingaesthetic/pseuds/wanderingaesthetic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In her grief over Scott's death, Princess Hilda seeks out his cowardly brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Broken Vessel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Estirose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estirose/gifts).



“Here,” a woman’s voice said. “Take this.”

The man hadn’t noticed her approach. He had been resting against the wall in the alleyway between a potion-maker’s shop and the home of a wealthy nobleman, a nobleman whose home had been put to other use, of late. He was not asleep, but elsewhere. Elsewhen. Lost in his own thoughts and his own misery.

She stood above him, offering a bottle of red wine.

“Will you not take it?” she asked, her voice quavering slightly.

Her cloak hid her face, but he recognized the voice.

“Your Highness,” he said, not looking beyond the wine bottle. “Should you be out alone?”

“Should _you,_ Prince Gordon?”

“I am no prince,” he said to the dirt. “I’m not anything.”

Indeed, he didn’t look like anything. Long blonde hair hung in greasy ropes around his face. If his clothes were once fine, they were dirty and torn now. His face bore a weeks-old scraggle that didn’t merit being called a beard.

She dropped the bottle of wine in his lap. He caught it on instinct.

“Your brother died today. Did you know that, _nothing_?” She threw back the hood of her cloak, revealing long, curling hair and porcelain skin, and allowing Gordon to suffer under the full focus of her glare.

Gordon nodded, looking dimly at the bottle in his hands. Galtean, dated seven years prior, a very good season by all reports. “That young warrior, Firion? He told me. I had assumed he was already dead.”

He had dreaded and hoped for this moment, when she would come to him, or send soldiers to deliver him to her feet. He had prayed that the heat of her wrath would immolate him, though he could not find the courage to walk into that fire himself. In his dark daydreams she pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the heart, or crushed his throat beneath a slippered foot, or read off a list of his crimes before she threw him in a dungeon.

Instead, she sat beside him in the dust and smoothed her skirt around her legs.

“What do you want from me, Princess?” he asked, despairing. He could have borne her anger. He could have borne the dungeon and the rack. For her to sit beside him, to lower herself to his level, was more than he could take.

“I wish to mourn, Gordon,” Princess Hilda said gently. “You are the only one here who knew him, save my father, and I would not lay another grief in the lap of a dying man. I wish to speak with you. I wish to speak of him, of… Scott.”

“You would toast him with his killer?” Gordon scoffed.

“I would toast him with his _brother._ ”

“I cannot, Princess. I cannot speak of him. I can barely think of him, or I….” His words trailed off as his throat constricted.

“That’s what the wine is for,” she said gently. Somewhere in her cloak or her skirts she had hidden a corkscrew and two glasses. When she handed him a full glass of wine, he laughed. There they were, two royal beggars, drinking from crystal in the gutter. He did not have the will left to refuse her.

They drank in silence, interrupted only by the far-off whistle of a chocobo. The wine was smooth and rich. Gordon had eaten precious little in the previous days, and his brain fogged pleasantly under its influence. He poured himself a second glass without pausing to consider what he was doing.

“When my father first spoke of marrying me to a prince of Kashuan,” Hilda finally said. “He intended for it to be you.”

Gordon gaped at her, entirely unsure of what he was meant to do with this information. Fortunately for his sake, she continued speaking.

“He meant to cement an alliance between Fynn and Kashuan. It was your father’s idea for Scott and I to marry. For our countries to eventually unite under one dynasty.”

At the mention of his father, Gordon felt his stomach turn.

“He never told me that.”

Gordon stared into the wine glass, letting his hands warm it, and waited until he could speak.

“Did you ever know Scott, really, Hilda? Did you ever have the chance to decide what you thought of him? Or was he always someone you knew you would be obligated to love?”

“I suppose… I don’t know. We were playmates as children, when our fathers would visit each other on diplomatic business. I chased him with kisses. And we played at being knights and dragons and robber queens. You were there, too. You were very small, but surely you remember?”

“I remember,” Gordon conceded. The memory barely even hurt. He had already done his mourning for those sunshine years.

“One summer, while he was visiting Fynn, we stole some bedclothes that were out to dry, and made tents in the rose gardens. They were from the guest rooms, satin, and they were all dirty and torn by the time we were through with them. My father was _so_ angry. We did the very same thing the next summer,” Hilda giggled. “We were perfect brats.”

“Mmm,” Gordon agreed.

“But I suppose… I suppose I do remember the first time I really realized… that he would be my husband. I was…. Thirteen, I think, and I went to Kashuan, without my father that time, for The Tournament of the Sun.”

Gordon gripped his glass more tightly.

“He wasn’t the main event of course, he was just in a demonstration match with some little lordling about our age, but he won, and he was _so_ handsome, grinning like a madman, with the sun in his hair. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world.”

_Do you remember what happened next, Hilda? Will you go on? Because I remember, oh, I remember. It wasn’t the swords. Everyone thought it was the swords, but it was the crowd, the damned crowd and all the warbirds._

He squeezed his eyes tight shut and buried his face in his arms, trying to dispel the memory, the humiliation.

“Gordon?” the princess asked in bewilderment. “Are you all right?”

“Do you remember, or do you know of, the Saturday Rebellion? Lord Rale’s rebellion, some call it.”

Hilda shook her head.

“I didn’t either, until I read an account of it. In _your_ library, Princess. And I pieced it together with my memories to understand what it was that _happened_ to me. Because I didn’t know.”

Here she was, looking for comfort over Scott’s death, and here he was, about to drag out his own foolish weakness. He would have silenced himself in shame, but the wine had uncorked his lips and he could not stop now.

“Lord Rale had some sort of quibble with my father, thought he was lenient on pirates, thought he should have gone to war with Palamecia two decades ago. So on. He thought he would make a better king than my father, in short. No one cares now because he’s long dead, but he had a few legions of soldiers that agreed with him. Always threatened to march them on the Sun Keep and never did. Then he died. Totally unrelated. Some sort of sickness. His son, the Young Lord Rale, mad with grief and just plain mad in general, took the remainder of his troops and lay siege to the Sun Keep.

“Young Lord Rale only had a fraction of his father’s troops. He couldn’t hope to hold the Keep. It was a suicidal, desperate move. I knew none of this. I was three years old. I only knew that I wasn’t allowed outdoors.

“One night, two royal guardsmen pulled Scott and I out of bed. They took us to a cellar and barricaded us in. It was hot, and suffocating, and pitch dark except when one of the Guardsmen would make a tiny Fire spell. It seemed like we were in there for days, but it may have only been a few hours the way time is when you’re a child. The guardsmen must have fallen asleep, and Scott too, because somehow I snuck out.

“I remember hearing great booming noises that shook the stones of the Keep. I wasn’t afraid at all. I only wanted to know what was making the sound. I found it, in the outermost courtyard. Lord Rale’s men were bombarding the gates with magic. Not the little, grade one Ices and Fires that every soldier knows, but stuff cast by _real_ mages that puts nature to shame. Lightning that made thunder louder than the real thing. Grade sixteen spells, maybe higher.

“I was so entranced by the noise and the light show that I barely noticed our soldiers, formed up in ranks before the gates, waiting on edge, as silent as a crowd of men and chocobos can be. I’m fortunate that I wasn’t shot full of arrows by our own men, but no one noticed me.

“And then hell broke loose. I can’t make much sense of what happened afterwards. I was knocked to the ground. My nose was bleeding from hitting the cobblestones face first. I tried to run or hide, but there was no place of safety. Everywhere there were shouting men and chocobo claws, flashes of spell-light, extreme cold and burning heat as spells flew and shook the earth on their impact. I saw men die, impaled on spears and swords and shards of ice. I sat on the cobblestones and cried and cried.

“Eventually, a knight tried to help me, to pick me up and take me to safety, but his armor was blackened from a spell blast, and his leg was injured, so he moved wrong. I thought he was a monster and struggled away from him, back toward the fighting.

“Somehow, I was finally knocked unconscious. Young Rale died in the battle, along with most of his men. They were smashed between the Sun Keep’s troops and reinforcements from the hills. I spent some time in bed after that, but I don’t remember it well. I was still very small. Life went back to normal. I was allowed outside again. I didn’t think back on that night for years.

“I tell you all of this to tell you about what happened that day at the Tournament of the Sun. You said you remembered Scott’s fight. Do you also remember mine?”

She shook her head, lost. “No, I do not.”

“That’s because it never happened. I was ten years old. I was waiting in the tent with the other contestants, waiting to face a young page eager for a fight. I was sweating with nerves and excitement. They announced me as a Scion of the Sun Flame, and I stepped into the courtyard. The same courtyard the battle had taken place in all those years ago.

“I had been nervous, but when I stepped into the yard I was faced with an enormous sense of dread, like a weight upon my chest. I could not take a step forward. I could not breathe. Something about the crowd, and all that whistling and cheering and stomping loosed something in my mind. I would have run away, but I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what was happening to me. Scott came to me, and said that… all was right, I needn’t win, I only had to put up a good show. But it wasn’t that. I enjoyed spear work, even if I had only middling skill with it, but I wasn’t afraid of losing. I was simply…. Afraid.”

“Eventually, it was clear that I was not going to recover in time to take my place in the tournament. The excuse was made that I had taken ill, and the event went on without me.

“Father loosed his anger on me that night, said that I was coward, that I had shamed him. I begged for another chance to prove myself, both then and later, but he asked me what would be different? I had received the best training available in battlecraft and in presenting myself. The failure must lay with me. Scott had performed without difficulty at the same age. He said…. he said, ‘Why should I put a broken vessel upon a pedestal?’ I had no argument for him.”

“I have heard it said,” Hilda said cautiously. “That some old soldiers, many years after their wars, will hear fireworks, or the drawing of a blade from its sheath, and be back in the battle in their minds. Perhaps it was the same with you.”

“I have thought much the same myself, but you must understand,” he protested, burying his hands in his hair. “I didn’t unravel this until years later. I barely remembered the battle. I wasn’t sure if I really remembered those things or if it were some terrible nightmare or fancy. No one spoke of it to me. I only knew that I was terrified.”

“You were a child. If veterans of many battles cannot cope with this, how could you be expected to?”

“But I didn’t understand, Hilda. I only knew that I was a coward. Scott could do it. Why couldn’t I? And even after I figured it out, what did it matter _why_ I was terrified, if it meant I could not fight?

“Scott was the eldest. He was always meant to be king. He was always given lessons that I was not, but until then I had never been made to feel… lesser than him. After that day, I was given no more formal lessons in battlecraft or magic. What I know, Scott taught me in secret. My father was King, and everyone in the Sun Keep sensed my disfavor with him, and treated me in kind. All but Scott.

“I might have hated him, out of jealousy. I might have resented his kindness. Perhaps, in my heart, I did. Perhaps that’s why I abandoned him when the fighting started at Fynn. But, oh Princess, if you had asked me a month ago, I would have told you that I adored him. I would have told you that I would have faced the axe or the rack rather than see him harmed. I still would. But I saw him rush into battle and I rushed the other way. I killed Scott as surely as if I had held the blade myself. My father was right. I am a broken vessel, and all hopes placed in me will fall to the ground.”

Gordon didn’t see the blow coming. The crack it made was almost theatrical, meant to be heard by all present. Had she practiced it, he wondered, for noblemen who stared too keenly at her décolletage?

The slap stung. It would probably leave a bruise. He closed his eyes, and welcomed another.

“You _idiot,_ look at me! Look at me!” she repeated, pulling his chin up to meet her gaze. Looking into her eyes, the dam that held back the worst of his shame and grief broke within him, and he wept.

“Princess,” he begged her. “Princess, please, do not suffer this wretch to live.”

She let go of him and stood, looking down at him in disgust. For a moment she looked as though she might kick him before she knelt beside him and took him in her arms.

Her kindness wasn’t a mercy, but broke him further, wracking him with choking, gasping sobs that barely left him breath. She stroked the back of his head like he was a child, and a long time passed before he realized that she was crying as well.

When they had both regained their senses and broken apart, Hilda poured the last of the wine into her glass and tipped it into her mouth.

“I do not need a dead man,” she said finally. “Nor is my need for soldiers so great that I would ever ask you to march into battle. What I do need is a leader, someone to gather the remnants of Kashuan to our cause. Someone to stand beside me, if he is able. I believe Scott’s brother is able, and I believe that Scott thought so, too.”

Gordon smiled the smallest of smiles. If what Firion told him this morning is true, what Hilda says is not a mere platitude. Scott did believe in Gordon, even after he failed him, until the end.

“I cannot yet, my princess, but I will try.”

Hilda smiled her own tiny smile. Those two words, “my princess,” said what volumes could not. He was hers.

Hilda stood and returned to her men, who had guarded the two royals from the mouth of the alleyway from the beginning.

“Sergeant Lars, may I have your spear? I will replace it at the base.”

“Aye, Your Highness,” he said, and handed the weapon over.

She returned to Gordon in the shadows and handed the spear down to him. He examined it without understanding. The point was made of mythril, like the sword Scott had been given on his sixteenth birthday.

“For when you are able to stand.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was this:
> 
> "Gordon and/or Scott; stories about growing up and how they became the way that they are in-game. Maybe as a story being told to Hilda or something that comes up when the team (either the main group or Dawn of Souls) is relaxing in between quests/battles. Funny or sad is fine."
> 
> Guess I went the "sad" route.
> 
> I initially considered writing some fun childhood shenanigans, or a drunk Hilda telling the Firion and co. stories about the brothers, but that seemed a little out of character. Then I tried to answer the question, "Why is Gordon the way he is?" and came up with the possible answers of a) Boromir and Faramir, or b) this. 
> 
> Thanks ff_exchange and Estirose for the opportunity to write this fic! Final Fantasy II forever!


End file.
